Aborted XP Home Repair - Now stuck in "setup is being restarted...." loop

[manishdk]

I am trying to do a Repair using the CD that came with Dell. So, I booted from the CD and chose the Recovery Console option. It dropped me into a command console environment and asked me to select which partition I wanted to repair and to provide my admin password. Now whenever I boot, I am getting a blue screen with "Setup is being restarted.." message. It will be there for some seconds adn then I am getting a blank and then blue screen with a big mouse cursor that I can move around. I am not getting any prompts for the CD. I cannot even log into Safe Mode? Can anyone please help. Thanks

[Janos™]

Can you try to edit the boot.ini file and remove the references to \$win_nt$.~bt\bootsect.dat. and then delete the associated folders. Also check the below link:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827324

You can even try do that with your Live Knoppix.

[anshusehgal]

It looks that the BOOTCFG /Rebuild might have added the \$win_nt$.~bt\bootsect.dat back in the boot.ini file. You can try to boot with Knoppix CD and then copy the contnts of the boot.ini file here and someone will be able to tell you which lines to remove to solve it. Did you check if the system was capable of booting before you attempted the repair? Have you got the floppy disk drive, if yes, then you might be able to boot with a floppy boot disk as well.

[Somedood]

Wow. Sorry for reviving an old thread but I need help. This exact same thing happened to me. Few days ago, my XP Pro randomly contracted the BSOD and so I tried fixing it by running the repair from my Windows XP CD.

After it restarted, like this guy, I freaked out after seeing what I thought was Windows reinstalling itself and forced shut-down my computer. Now whenever I start it up, I get the same light blue screen with "Setup is restarting........" then my PC reboots itself and it becomes a loop. With safe mode, it just shows the black screen with the safe mode border for a few seconds and reboots itself. I've tried rerunning the repair with no luck.

I tried what this guy says and I tried rebuilding my boot.ini file with recovery console and running chkdisk and I've also tried opening it with Knoppix but there's no such "\$win_nt$.~bt\bootsect.dat" reference in it or anything. Just a normal boot.ini file. Not sure if this guy solved his problem, since it seems he never came back here but does anyone know how I can solve this without wiping my computer clean or transferring files onto anything external? I just want my old computer back.

[Big Fish]

You should first transfer the files to some external drive. It will take less time to stop and then backup the data and do this properly than to try to recover the issue. The solution is to use Recovery console, by navigating to the root folder of your system drive and rename boot.ini to boot.old and then copy boot.bak to boot.ini and then exit.

[Warichet]

I'm in exactly the same situation as Somedood.

My problem arised all of a suden, for no apparent reason, light blue screen with only an active cursor. So I though it's a virus or a hardware problem.
I thought the video controller was dead. I got another PC, exactly the same, installed the original disk in it, same problem. So my XP is corrupt, for sure.

I installed the original disk in another computer in order to scan it for virus, although my McAfee is up-to-date, I discovered and removed a trojan horse A0057140.exe. After reboot, no luck. Maybe the trojan has damaged system files.

I've read a Windows XP repair procedure. I first slipstreamed a new XP CD with SP2, then I tried a repair, but when I restarted I got the same light blue screen with "Setup is restarting........"

Also, as mentionned above: with safe mode, it shows the black screen with the words "safe mode" on all 4 corners, but no control of XP

I tried the boot.ini hint, but it is not applicable as there is no such thing as "\$win_nt$.~bt\bootsect.dat"
XP thinks the setup is incomplete, it must be remembered somewhere, any hint ? probably in the Registry ?

Indeed, the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\SystemSetupInProgr
had a value of 1

I loaded the system hive from another computer, changed the value to 0
Unloaded the hive (the file time stamp reflected the change, so I guess the operation succeeeded).
Put the disk back in place and rebooted
No luck
Either my registry procedure is wrong, maybe no actual write happens to the hive or "someone" puts the value back to 1.
Any idea ?

[.:MUNDITO:.]

You can try to go to the below registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\SystemSetupInProgress

And change the SystemSetupInProgress 0x1 value signals to the operating system that the setup in in progress.

[Warichet]

I've found several keys which could possibly affect this loop behaviour.
But after having reset them to 0, at next reboot I still get the
"setup is being restarted...."

So there must be a master process which triggers the whole scenario, any idea ? Also to be noted, this behaviour arised after having executed the XP repair procedure. Any clue ?

[Deprived]

Sorry to revive this thread, but can we get a solution? Same exact thing happened to me. What can be done to resolve this issue?

[Warichet]

Sorry, I can't help.
Despite all the tips I've got and all my efforts (I'm not a beginner) it was a total failure, still on my stomach.

[chaitu21]

Guys i also encountered the same problem and it should be kept in mind that first data backup should be done for that use Windows live CD which helps u to save the data actually it is OS with minimal functionality and runs without installing on the system when system has booting problems just like the current scenario. Next thing is forget about the getting back the same system in tact i have tried in many ways but lets face it u cannot get it back.But there is way not to lose data by installing the OS on the existing c drive without formatting it. In that way the data in the c drive will be safe in 95% of cases